Find Your Fix

Tag: snatch

If you are not pushing through your whole foot, you are losing power and balance. It is even worse if you tend to move your feet during the pull. If you have one of those problems, here is a simple fix!

Take a couple of plates, and stand on the with the heels off of the back. Then, complete a few pulls where you are forced to drive through the balls of your feet. Next, step back off the plates, and perform a full clean while being sure to push through the full foot!

This Episode of The Lifting Fix is a special Barbell WOD Edition, but applies to many different athletes. The next barbell WOD cycle has some power snatches, followed by barbell cycling with a lighter weight. The goal is to find a rhythm that you can maintain over over the full set. While doing so, there are a few technical tweaks you can make at lighter wright’s that will allow you to keep your rhythm. First, keep your hips higher. Because the weight is light, you can get away with this start position. Second, you can catch the bar and ride it up immediately! However, don’t throw technique totally out the window! You still need to get the bar behind your knees, and don’t get pulled forward to your toes !

Louie has a problem jumping backwards. This causes other issues, such as landing on his toes and missing a lot of lifts out front. In order to get him to finish up and tall, we used some constraint-based training. By putting a piece of plywood behind him, we can get him to finish up.

Be sure to put it far enough away that the lifter won’t land on it, but lose enough so they know it is there!

Special thank you to CrossFit Excel for your hospitality.

Transcription

It’s Danny of The Lifting Fix. I’ve got Louie here with me. Louie has a problem; he keeps landing soft. He is landing on toes, landing soft. And we realized it’s not just he is not getting his heels down but he is jumping backwards. And since he is getting a behind the bar, he’s jumping backwards. He has to land on toes cause most people are not flexible enough to get your heels down three feet behind you.

So to fix that we’re getting him to just finish tall. So we’re going to bring in some constraints. So at California Strength this is what we call constraint based training. We’re gonna put barriers in the way so he’s not allow to do something. So to get him to finish up and stop stepping backwards.

Louie’s gonna lift his bar here in front of the wood. Of course you could use some weights or whatever. I’ll use a plywood. I wanna slide it here behind him. Use caution. Alright now, one thing you’ll notice is it is behind him, and he knows it’s there. But, the thing isn’t really that close. Even if someone jumps way back they’re probably not gonna jump back that far. However, it’s close enough for him to know it’s there and he’s gonna remember that it’s there.

So go ahead and snatch Louie. Make sure you finish tall and let’s keep your heels down. There it is. Alright. He didn’t jump more than a quarter of one inch. Best snatch of his entire life. Alright. And there is really no threat especially the lightweight. There is really no threat on landing on that wood. Ok. But he knows it’s there. Thank you Louie! Thank you Nick!

This is a great tip to find the correct starting position. When lifters get pulled forward right off the floor, or struggle to push through their whole foot, this drill can really help! Float the bar just off the ground, and FEEL for balance. Push through your heals, then your toes. Be sure to feel positioning and your balance!

Danny: Is it on? Alright, Danny from The Lifting Fix at Crossfit H Town in Houston. We’re in town for the World Championships and I’m working with Isaac, and a little bit and with Charlie as well. A lot of people with longer limbs, maybe have long arms, got kind of long legs. Some would say lengthy, perhaps even describe them as gangly … might be another way to do it. They tend to have the same problem and that is start too far over the bar because their legs are so long. It’s kind of hard to sink down, and feel the right position.

Go ahead and get set like you’re in a snatch. And you’ll notice as he get set, he is too far over the bar. His shoulders are well in advance the bar, like, almost 8 inch or so. Ok. So what we’re gonna have to do is work on feeling the position where his shoulder is directly over the bar where they should be.

So what he’s gonna do is just grab the bar off the ground like the quarter inch, a little lower than that. Good. Now while he is here, he is gonna kind of feel balance – so he is gonna lean forward, then back, you’ll notice as he leans back with loose arms. Does that look more balanced? He feels most balance and his shoulders have fixed directly over the bar. Go ahead and snatch from there.

There it is. And then he lowers it back down and he is looking to float off the ground again. Good. Pause that quarter inch and just feel balance. Rock back and forth feel pushing through your full foot. Feel balance because the bar’s weight is now part of your body. You need to find you center mass together with the bar. And again, snatch from there. There it is.

A much better starting position allows you to push through the floor through his full foot. Thank you Ivan! Thank you Crossfit!

Stephanie has a problem with not getting the bar back into her hips. She drags it up her thighs, then throws her hips forward. To fix this, she needs to practice binging the bar in using her lats, while just standing up! This will help her to stop throwing her hips forward, and put the bar where she wants it.

TRANSCRIPTION

Danny: Alright, how’s it going I’m Danny I’m here with The Lifting Fix. [0:07] I have with me Stephanie and we’re at Crossfit 706 in Martinez Georgia. The problem is when she goes to snatch – the bar stays out front a little. She does a good job, she gets it behind her knee- but then she doesn’t keep the tension in her lats, and she loops the bar. So do a snatch, just a snatch. That’s good. And now do one from the knee. There you go, that’s it. So it kind of drags the back and really getting into the hips.

So, we are just going to have her go to position one. [00:41] She’s just going to stand up and feel the tension in her lats and pull it in. There you go. And now you’re just going to pull and standing up and try to go a little higher. There we go. And notice how it’s not floating away – it’s just coming up – go ahead again. Bar is just coming up. Now [1:03] exact same thing, tension in the lats keeps it coming up. Now do a snatch. There you go, very good and stand. So what’s she’s doing- she’s learning to get in when she needs to – make the contact the correct way – all that tension in her lats, and bring the bar back into her as she just stands up. Thank you Stephanie, thank you very much CrossFit 706!

Foot Width can be a big factor. Alec had an issue of getting pulled forward on heavier lifts. This was partially due to his narrow foot stance. By widening his feet out, he is able to keep his chest up at heavier weights!

TRANSCRIPTION:

Male Speaker 1: All right [0:00:03] I have Alec with me at CrossFit Krypton. He was snatching earlier and we were talking about some different things that can really help him out. So go ahead and do a snatch and then we will talk about what we’re going to fix.

All right. So overall, things look really good. He has the right sequencing, getting his knees back out of the way. Everything looks pretty good.

But one issue that’s happening is as the weight is going to get heavier, he starts kind of [0:00:32] drop his chest and that’s a product of his stance. Set your feet up, just to set in here. He’s narrow in here which is OK. He has a lot of power there but the problem is because he’s so narrow, it’s a longer pull. So it starts to pull him forward as the weight goes up.

It’s not that he’s not strong enough to keep his chest up. It’s that some little thing in there is kind of prohibiting him from doing that. He’ PR clean is 355 pounds. He’s strong enough to pull on the bar. He’s just getting pulled forward because something is off.

First we’re just going to shorten the pull a little bit which will help him do that. He can move his feet out, just to here, just make it one or two inch of his foot and he can kind of slowly of that.

Now as he snatches there, it’s going to shorten the pull and it’s going to help him keep his chest up, even at heavier weight. Here we go. Yeah. With 135, it’s pretty minor but you can see it. It does shorten the pull a little bit, allowed him to stay back and keep his chest up.

So it’s not just yelling at somebody, “Keep your chest up, keep your chest up, keep your chest up.” Sometimes it helps to figure out why the athlete can’t do that and then allow them to fully use the strength they have. Thank you Alec, thank you Sean, thank you CrossFit Krypton!

It’s important to move your feet in order to get to full extension and catch in a solid, optimal position. If you have a problem lifting in concrete, this is a great drill that will help you to move your feet!

Transcription

The Lifting Fix I’m Danny Lehr. I’m with Arianna here. She has issue of not moving her feet. That’s kind of A common problem people have.When you don’t move your feet, you really struggle to extend the way you should, to finish the way you should. So we’re gonna see an example there of having not moving your feet in a lift. Arianna, just go ahead and snatch. There you go. And so you see she is kind of rocks to her toes and kind of rocks back down.

Here’s one way to fix that and get people to move their feet. You have something to move that to force them to do it. So let’s grab something handy. Put them nice and close together. The key in here she is not going to do a full lift, she is not going all the way and do a squat because I just want to get a little too risky. I want it to be safe as something like this can be.

You’re going to your power snatch and then a hang power snatch from this position landing on the plates. Here we go and then she step back down. And one from the hang. There we go. And so it’s kind of two things are fixed here. One is really kind of force you to finish up because you have to finish up to get on the plates. The other thing is, make sure she moves her feet. She obviously she has moved her feet. So then what we can do is slide them out of away and let’s see the after. Do a good snatch here with this. She wanted to use a lot more weight. I want her not to get hurt. There you go. Obviously the goal is not to move your feet dramatically. We’re not trying to teach people to do crazy donkey kicks, we just need to move your feet. Alright. Thank you Arianna! Thank you Miguel!

Trouble catching a bar in the bottom position? If you get to the bottom, only to miss, it may be because you are too loose down there! Try to catch the lift at parallel. Even if it’s too heavy to power, TRY to catch it right at 90 degrees. If it’s heavy, it will simply push you down further, BUT, you’ll catch it tight!